p A central feature of the contemporary working-class movement is that it combines economic and political forms of struggle. More and more frequently the demands of the workers go beyond the framework of economic terms to include political elements. The number of strikers involved in political strikes has risen from about 44 per cent in 1958 to 64 per cent in 1962.

p Today even the struggle for purely economic demands usually brings the working class round to the realisation that a political struggle is necessary. In many countries the bourgeois state, it will be remembered, is a big proprietor serving the interests of the monopolies and itself directly exploiting a large section of the working class—the section employed at state-run enterprises. The working people come up against the bourgeois state in social insurance, taxation, trade union activities and other spheres. They see for themselves that wherever it can this state protects the interests of the monopolies. During strikes, demonstrations or rallies there are clashes with the police and, in some cases, with the troops of the bourgeois state. A result of the development of stale-monopoly capitalism is that now; class contradictions manifest themselves as contradictions between the working people and the united forces of the monopolies and the state, thus spurring on the class struggle and enlarging the circle of problems around which the struggle is raging.

p Formerly strikers demanded primarily an eight-hour working day, the recognition of the most elementary rights of the trade union organisations, the introduction of social insurance, the granting of suffrage to all citizens, and so forth. Today in addition to these demands, the working class seeks the realisation of demands that hit capitalism much more painfully. It wants broader political rights and democratic liberties for all people, the cessation of the arms race and the consolidation of peace and social progress. It crusades for the nationalisation of key branches of the economy and for the democratisation of the 92 management of these branches. The working class and its revolutionary vanguard, the Marxist parties, aim their main blow at the capitalist monopolies, which are the mainstay of reaction and aggression and bear the responsibility for the arms race and the difficult position of the working people.

The struggle for economic demands thus intertwines more and more closely with the struggle for fundamental social and political changes, for the uprooting of the capitalist way of life.